Indentured Servants in Colonial Virginia

Indentured servants were men and
women who signed a contract (also known as an indenture or a covenant) by which they
agreed to work for a certain number of years in exchange for transportation to Virginia and, once they
arrived, food, clothing, and shelter. Adults usually served for four to seven years
and children sometimes for much longer, with most working in the colony's tobacco fields. With a long history in
England, indentured servitude became, during most of the seventeenth century, the
primary means by which Virginia planters filled their nearly inexhaustible need for
labor. At first, the Virginia
Company of London paid to transport servants across the Atlantic, but with
the institution of the headright
system in 1618, the company enticed planters and merchants to incur the cost
with the promise of land. As a result, servants flooded into the colony, where they
were greeted by deadly diseases and often-harsh conditions that killed a majority of
newcomers and left the rest to the mercy of sometimes-cruel masters. The General Assembly passed laws
regulating contract terms, as well as the behavior and treatment of servants. Besides
benefiting masters with long indentures, these laws limited servant rights while
still allowing servants to present any complaints in court. By the end of the seventeenth century, the
number of new servants in Virginia had dwindled, and the colony's labor needs were
largely met by enslaved
Africans. MORE...

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Origins

Servitude had a long history in England,
dating back to medieval serfdom. The Ordinance of Labourers, passed in June 1349,
declared that all men and women under the age of sixty who did not practice a
craft must serve anyone requiring their labor. Parliament updated the law in 1495
and 1563, with the latter version, the Statute of Artificers, still
being in effect when the English founded Jamestown. Between 1520 and 1630, England's
population more than doubled, from 2.3 million to 4.8 million, and Parliament
hoped its 1563 statute might "banishe Idleness[,] advance Husbandrye," and so deal
with the near-overwhelming number of poor and unemployed citizens. In fact, the
founding of Virginia itself was partially in response to this problem. In his Discourse on Western Planting (1584), Richard Hakluyt (the younger) argued to
Queen Elizabeth that
new American colonies would energize England's "decayed trades" and provide work
for the country's "multitudes of loyterers and idle vagabondes."

In England, an indenture, or contract for labor, was known as a "covenant merely
personal," and could apply either to farm laborers or apprentices learning a
trade. Contracts generally lasted a year, after which terms were renegotiated. As
the merchant and adventurer Sir George Peckham noted in 1583, many English men and
women willingly became servants "in hope thereby to amend theyr estates," and
young children were sometimes bound to service by parents who might not otherwise
be able to afford their upbringing. While there was not necessarily a strong
stigma attached to indentured servitude, the institution—first in England and then
in Virginia—temporarily transformed free men and women into chattel, or property
to be bought and sold.

Land and Labor

The Virginia Company of London always had more
land than labor to work it. At first, the company attempted to entice investors by
offering them shares in the company that were redeemable for land. But when
profits failed to materialize and the colony became infamous for its high
mortality rate, the company began shipping servants to Virginia at its own expense
and placing them on company-owned land. (An Englishman willing to risk his life in
order to work someone else's acreage was not usually someone who could afford
transatlantic passage.) Once the servants arrived, the company could rent them out
to planters for a year at a time, requiring the planters to take responsibility
for the workers' food, shelter, and health.

With the introduction of marketable tobacco, however, demand for labor
skyrocketed. Private investors who, alongside the company, had shipped servants at
their own expense continued to do so while the company rid itself of its role as
rental agent. Instead, it sold servants directly to planters at a price based on
the cost of passage. Planters, mariners, and merchants then fixed the servants'
years of service based on the labor required to recoup their purchase price and
subsequent care.

Servants, who ranged from convicted criminals to skilled workers, in time came to occupy the
lowest rung on the social ladder in Virginia. While tenants kept half of what they
earned, servants kept nothing and were almost entirely at the mercy of their
masters for the terms of their indentures. Movement up the ladder was limited,
even once a term of service had been completed, although servants with marketable
skills had a greater chance of success. Few servants were like Robert Townshend, who
arrived as an apprentice in 1620 and eventually served in the House of Burgesses.

In the summer of 1620, the Virginia
Company of London announced that it would send to Virginia, at "publike charge," "eight
hundred choise persons," half of whom were assigned to be tenants of company land.
One hundred "yong Maides" were sent to "make wives for these Tenants," and one
hundred boys to serve as apprentices. Finally, "one hundred servants [were] to be
disposed amongst the old Planters, which they greatly
desire, and have offered to defray their charges with very great thankes."

Soon, however, the company found it unnecessary to continue incurring the "publike
charge" of transporting servants. Instead, it implemented a system by which it
used the prospect of land to entice new colonists, and with them laborers.
Headrights, first described in the so-called Great Charter of 1618, awarded 100 acres of
land each to planters who had been in the colony since May 1616, and 50 acres each
to anyone who covered the cost of transporting a new immigrant to Virginia. These
newcomers, more often than not, were indentured servants, allowing successful
planters simultaneous access to land and labor, with no upfront cost to the
company. Merchants and mariners reaped a benefit, too, for they recruited prospective
servants, bargained their indenture terms with them, and then sold the contracts
to planters in Virginia. Merchants also accumulated headrights that could be used
to acquire land. In time, these headrights, or land certificates, were bought and
sold much like modern-day stock certificates.

Sometimes groups of investors
collectively absorbed the cost of outfitting and transporting workers to the
colony. Virginia Company of London stockholders were entitled to 100 acres per
share, and high-ranking officials were furnished with indentured servants as part
of their stipend. In some instances groups of investors promised to give land to
their indentured servants after they fulfilled their contracts. The Society of Berkeley
Hundred's investors offered their skilled servants parcels that ranged
from 25 to 50 acres, to be claimed once they had fulfilled their contracts.

Various factors fueled the need for new servants. One was demographics.
Approximately 50,000 servants—or three-quarters of all new arrivals—immigrated to
the Chesapeake Bay colonies
between 1630 and 1680. The ratio of men to women among servants in the 1630s was
six-to-one. Between 1640 and 1680, the ratio dropped to four-to-one, but even
then, many men could not find wives to marry and therefore could not establish
families. As a result of this and the high mortality rate among new servants,
company officials and English merchants were forced to constantly replenish the
Virginia colony's servant population.

Another factor creating a need for new
servants was the rapidly expanding tobacco market. It created substantial
opportunities for would-be planters, but because tobacco was a demanding,
labor-intensive crop, it also required a large number of laborers. At the same
time, tobacco's acceptance as a medium of exchange prompted planters to enhance
their productivity. Between the 1620s and the 1670s, the annual output of tobacco
per hand rose from approximately 710 pounds to around 1,600 pounds; during the
same period, shipping costs decreased. Although tobacco prices had begun to
decline sharply by late in the 1620s and continued to fall, production remained
profitable because planters were able to produce larger crops with fewer hands.
Yet even as they technically required fewer servants, planters demanded more.
That's because tobacco consumption rose in response to lower prices, and planters,
eager to meet that demand, increased their production.

Contract Terms

As indentured servants poured into Virginia, they came to account for fully half
of Virginia's population. Such rapid change caused problems, however, and the
General Assembly passed numerous statutes designed to address them. These laws
served several broad purposes, including regulation of servants' contract terms,
behavior, and treatment.

Contract terms were important for several reasons. The assembly wished to protect
masters from terms that did not fully recoup their cost of transporting servants
from England to Virginia, in addition to their subsequent care. The assembly also
faced the problem of servants who arrived without any contracts; the English
custom of requiring a single year's service absent any other arrangement would not
suffice in America, where the labor market was less stable than in England.
Finally, the masters—who included most men who sat in the assembly—had an interest
in prolonging terms of indenture because briefer service led to disruptive
turnover, labor shortages, and an unstable workforce.

For these reasons, terms of service did not shorten even as tobacco production
became more efficient and profitable. Instead, lengthy terms of service became
customary and dictated by law. As early as 1619, the General Assembly required all
servants to register with the secretary of state upon arrival and "Certifie him
upon what termes or conditions they be come hither." In its 1642–1643 session, the
assembly passed a law mandating
that any servant arriving without an indenture and who was younger than twelve
years old should serve for seven years, servants aged twelve to nineteen should
serve for five years, and servants aged twenty and older should serve for four
years. Legislation passed in the 1657–1658
session adjusted these ages: anyone under the age of fifteen should serve until he
or she turned twenty-one, while anyone sixteen or older should serve for four
years. By 1705, the
law had been simplified, so that all non-indentured Christian servants
older than nineteen should serve until they turned twenty-four. ("Christian
servants" generally referred to non-blacks and non-Indians.) Lawmakers entrusted
the county courts with judging the age of each servant. In the meantime, they required slightly
different terms for Irish servants.

The assembly declined to dictate standard
terms for privately negotiated indentures; as a result, contracts varied in length
and specificity. On September 7, 1619, Robert Coopy, whose age went unnoted,
signed an indenture
for three years' service to the proprietors of Berkeley's Hundred requiring that
he be "obedient" to his betters and that they "transport him (with gods
assistance)" to Virginia and there "maintayne him with convenient diet and
apparel." In a much
shorter document, dated March 14, 1664, Lott Richards, a merchant from
Bristol, England, sold "one Sarvant boy by name William [F]reeman being about
eleven years old and haveing noe indenture" to John Barnes for a term of eight
years. By 1755, Thomson Mason could simply fill out a form, which he did in order to
indenture for four years William Buckland, a twenty-one-year-old carpenter and
joiner, to his brother George
Mason, who was overseeing the construction of Gunston Hall. Buckland's agreement was somewhat
unusual in that, as a skilled worker, he was paid wages of £20 per year in
addition to receiving "all necessary Meat, Drink, Washing, [and] Lodging."

Servants whose contracts had expired typically received "freedom dues," loosely
described as a quantity of corn and clothing. The 1705 statute was the first to
explicitly mention this "good and laudable custom," and required that male
servants, "upon their freedom," be supplied with ten bushels of corn, thirty
shillings (or the like value in goods), and a musket worth at least twenty
shillings. Women were entitled to fifteen bushels of corn and the equivalent of
forty shillings.

During the seventeenth century, freedom dues were negotiated as part of the
indenture. Robert Coopy's contract, for instance, guaranteed him thirty acres of
land at Berkeley's Hundred. John Barnes, who purchased William Freeman, was
obliged only to pay the boy "his full due According to the Custom of this
Country." Depending on the time and place, this might have included corn,
clothing, and tools. In 1675, an indentured servant who charged his master with
cheating him asked the General
Court to free him "and pay him corne & clothes." The judges ruled in
his favor, granting him "three Barrels of Corne att the Cropp." Occasionally the
owners of indentured servants refused to release them or give them their freedom
dues. At Jamestown, when a male indentured servant who had fulfilled his contract
insisted on receiving his "corn and clothes," his master exploded in rage and struck him on
the head with his truncheon.

Servants' Behavior

In addition to contract terms, the General Assembly concerned itself with servant
behavior. In The Whole Duty of Man, a Protestant devotional work
published anonymously in 1658, the English author reminds readers that all
servants owe their masters, as a matter of conscience, "obedience,"
"Faithfulness," "Patience and Meekness," and "Diligence." In Virginia, at least,
such ideals were not always met. For instance, burgesses were forced to pass laws
in response to servants who ran away and to those who, while still
under contract, hired themselves out to new masters under better terms. The
1642–1643 assembly passed a law—subsequently revised in
1657–1658—requiring that servants carry certificates and punishing any master who
hired a servant without proper papers.

The assembly was also perennially concerned with "ffornication," especially when
it resulted in female servants becoming pregnant. This led to a loss of the
servants' labor, for which the law attempted to provide compensation to the
master. An act passed in the 1642–1643
session and revised in 1657–1658 added time, in the case of pregnancy and so-called
secret marriages, to the indentures of male and female servants both; it called
for fines on any freemen involved. Sometimes servants were singled out in the
context of broader morals laws, such as in "Against ffornication," passed in
1661–1662, which responded to servant pregnancies by requiring large fines to be
paid to the local parish. If the master refused to pay, then the servants were to be
whipped.

Another
law, passed in 1662, stipulated that the children of such pregnancies
were to be handed over to the church, which would be reimbursed for its trouble by
the "reputed father." If the father of an illegitimate child were a master, then,
according to a 1662 law, the maidservant would, upon completion of her indenture, be
sold to the local parish for two years. This was to prevent female servants from
avoiding work through pregnancy and then attempting to leave their children in the
care of their masters. A number of these laws were combined and revised into "An act for
punishment of ffornication and seaverall other sins and offences," passed
by the assembly in 1696.

Servants' Treatment

Servants ran away largely because their lives in Virginia tended to be nasty,
brutish, and short. Although they often worked alongside their masters in tobacco
fields, they usually lived apart and often under primitive conditions. They worked
from dawn until dusk, six days a week through the growing season, which on tobacco
and wheat farms could last from as early as February until as late as November.
The mortality rate was very high, mostly due to what Virginians called the "summer
seasoning," a time during which disease killed a majority of new arrivals.
According to the Dutchman David Peterson DeVries, who visited Virginia in March
1633, immigrants died "like cats and dogs," while the sick "want to sleep all the
time, but they must be prevented from sleeping by force," lest they die.

In the meantime, servants—whether seasoned or unseasoned—were treated as property
subject to overwork and beatings. For instance, in 1624 Alice Proctor, whom
Captain John Smith termed a
proper and civil gentlewoman, arranged for her runaway maidservant Elizabeth Abbott to
be beaten, and the punishment was so severe that Abbott died. George Sandys, the colony's
treasurer, allowed his servants to starve and languish for lack of medical
treatment, while in 1649 a mistress was charged with thrashing her
"mayd Servant … more Liken a dogge then a Christian," so that her head was "as
soft as a sponge, in one place" and her back was possibly broken. Other female
servants were victims of sexual assault. DeVries worried that servants were not
treated with appropriate dignity. "I was astonished to observe of the English
people, that they lose their servants in gambling with each other," he wrote. "I
told them I had never seen such work in Turk or Barbarian, and that it was not
becoming Christians."

Jane Dickenson was a servant living on the
Martin's Hundred
plantation with her husband, Ralph Dickenson, when Opechancanough's Indians attacked in 1622. After killing Ralph
Dickenson, the Pamunkey
Indians held Jane Dickenson prisoner for ten months until Dr. John Pott, a Jamestown
physician and future Virginia governor, ransomed her freedom for two pounds of beads. Pott
claimed that Dickenson owed him both the remaining time on her late husband's
contract and the time it would take her to reimburse him the ransom he paid for
her release. In a petition dated March 30, 1624, Dickenson asked the General Court to free
her, alleging that Pott's treatment of her "much differeth not from her slavery
with the Indians."

On at least two occasions, servants banded together to protest the way they were
treated. In 1661, forty servants in York County, angered by the lack of meat in their diets, conspired to rebel
against their masters; in 1663, a group of nine indentured servants in Gloucester County
plotted to arm themselves and march to Governor Sir William Berkeley's home, where they
would demand their freedom. In both cases, the authorities were notififed before
the plans could be carried out, and the conspirators were punished. According to
Berkeley, four of the Gloucester County conspirators were hanged for their
actions.

The General Assembly did pass legislation aimed at protecting servants from
mistreatment. In a 1657 statute otherwise concerned
with runaways, servants were granted the right to take to the courts complaints of
"harsh and bad usage, or else for want of diett or convenient necessaries." In
1661, one act
required "suffitient" diet and clothing to servants on their transatlantic voyage,
while another
prohibited "cruell" treatment once they arrived, with burgesses worrying that the
"feare thereof" had discouraged some servants from coming to Virginia. In 1676,
the assembly further directed masters not to make bargains with their servants in an
attempt to trick or manipulate them into extended terms of service. Other acts
aimed to protect the limited rights of Virginia Indian servants. Of course, these
laws were neither preventative nor always enforced; rather, they reflected the
harsh reality of servitude in Virginia, a reality that, as time passed, became
less and less distinct from chattel slavery.

From Servitude to Slavery

"Servitude in Virginia's tobacco fields
approached closer to slavery than anything known at the time in England," the
historian Edmund S. Morgan wrote. "Men served longer, were subjected to more
rigorous punishments, [and] were traded about as commodities" beginning in the
1620s. For much of the seventeenth century, those servants were white English men
and women—with a smattering of Africans, Indians, and Irish—under indenture with
the promise of freedom. By 1705, and the passage of "An act concerning Servants
and Slaves," slavery had become ensconced at all levels of Virginia society and
was well on its way to completely replacing indentured servitude as the primary
source of bound labor in the colony.

Most historians have explained this shift by citing either social or economic
shifts in Virginia beginning around the 1670s. Morgan and others, for instance,
have argued that Bacon's
Rebellion (1676–1677) was, in part, the result of discontent among former
servants. By harnessing that discontent and, in the name of racial solidarity,
pointing it in the direction of enslaved Africans, white elites could create a
more stable workforce and one that was less likely to threaten their own
interests. Other historians have observed that the flow of English servants began
to dry up beginning in the 1660s and fell off dramatically around 1680, forcing
planters to rely more heavily on slaves. Slavery did not end indentured servitude,
in other words; the end of servitude gave rise to slavery.

The historian John C. Coombs has suggested a third possibility: "There was no
'trigger' cause for the conversion." Instead, slavery expanded gradually as the
English empire grew, its role in the slave trade matured, and enslaved Africans
became more available throughout Virginia. By the 1670s, slaves had begun to
replace white indentured servants among the Virginia gentry—before both Bacon's Rebellion and the
sharp decline in new servants. By 1690, slaves accounted for nearly all of the
gentry's bound workforce but only 25 to 40 percent of the non-elite's. Over time,
as the supply of enslaved Africans increased and their prices decreased, farmers
and planters agreed that they preferred a slave for life to a servant who had the
hope of freedom. Even so, indentured servants—particularly those with specialized
skills—and convict servants continued to be imported to the colony throughout the
eighteenth century.

Time Line

June 1349
- The English Parliament passes the Ordinance of Labourers, declaring that all men and women under the age of sixty who do not practice a craft must serve anyone requiring their labor.

1520–1630
- England's population more than doubles, from 2.3 million to 4.8 million people.

January 12, 1563
- The English Parliament passes the Statute of Artificers, which compiles and revises 200 years' worth of law regarding indentured servitude. It is still in effect when Jamestown is founded in 1607.

1584
- Richard Hakluyt (the younger) presents a treatise on colonization, the Discourse on Western Planting, to Queen Elizabeth. He is awarded the next open appointment as prebendary of Bristol Cathedral, which he will take up in 1586.

November 18, 1618
- The Virginia Company of London issues its "Instructions to George Yeardley," which include the establishment of the General Assembly and the headright system. These instructions come to be known as the Great Charter.

August 4, 1619
- The General Assembly passes a law requiring all servants to register with the secretary of state upon arrival in Virginia.

September 7, 1619
- Robert Coopy of North Nibley, Gloucester, England, age unknown, signs a three-year indenture to work as a servant for the proprietors of the Berkeley Hundred plantation in Virginia.

1620–1670
- During this time, the annual output of tobacco per hand rises from approximately 710 pounds to around 1,600 pounds. During the same time, shipping costs decrease.

1620
- Fifteen-year-old Robert Townshend arrives in Virginia as an apprentice to Dr. John Pott.

July 18, 1620
- The Virginia Company of London declares its intention to pay to ship 800 new settlers to Virginia, including tenants, apprentices, young women, and indentured servants.

March 30, 1624
- In a petition addressed to the governor and General Court, the indentured servant Jane Dickenson pleads for her release from Dr. John Pott. A former prisoner of Virginia Indians, Dickenson claims that Pott's treatment of her is worse.

October 10, 1624
- The General Court hears testimony concerning the deaths of two indentured servants, Elizabeth Abbott and Elias Hinton, at the hands of their masters, John and Alice Proctor.

January 31, 1625
- The General Court hears testimony in the case of an indentured servant, William Mutch, who allegedly was attacked by his master after he demanded his so-called freedom dues, or the payment servants customarily receive upon completion of their contracts.

1630–1680
- During this time, 75,000 people immigrate to the Chesapeake Bay colonies, 50,000 of whom are indentured servants. The large majority of these newcomers are men.

March 1633
- The Dutchman David Pieterson DeVries visits Virginia and makes note of the high mortality rate among newcomers and the poor treatment of indentured servants.

March 1642
- The General Assembly passes laws regulating the time served by servants without indentures, requiring servants to carry certificates, prohibiting masters from hiring servants without proper papers, and punishing servants who become pregnant.

July 31, 1649
- The Lower Norfolk County Court considers two depositions that attest to the mistreatment, by Deborah Fernehaugh, of her indentured servant Charetie Dallen.

March 1657
- The General Assembly passes laws revising the required time of service for servants without indentures; granting servants the right to take complaints to court; and adding time to indentures, in the case of pregnancy and secret marriages, to male and female servants both.

1658
- The Whole Duty of Man, a Protestant devotional work, is published anonymously. Many scholars believe the author to be Richard Allestree.

March 1661
- The General Assembly passes laws requiring "suffitient" diet and clothing for servants making their transatlantic voyage, prohibiting "cruell" treatment once they arrive in Virginia, and requiring large fines to be paid to the local parish by the master of any servant who becomes pregnant.

March 1661
- In "Concerning Indians," the General Assembly regulates the various interactions Virginia colonists have with neighboring Virginia Indians.

December 1662
- The General Assembly passes two laws stipulating that the children of servants who become pregnant should be handed over to the church, and that, upon their freedom, the mothers should serve the parish for two years as reimbursement.

March 14, 1664
- Lott Richards, a merchant from Bristol, England, sells "one Sarvant boy by name William [F]reeman being about eleven yeares old and haveing noe indenture" to John Barnes for a term of eight years.

June 16, 1675
- The General Court orders the black indentured servant Phillip Gowen to be freed, finding that his master cheated him.

February 1676
- In "An act lymiting masters dealing with their servants," the General Assembly directs masters not to make bargains with their indentured servants in an attempt to trick them into extended terms of service.

1690
- By this year, enslaved Africans and African Americans account for nearly all of the Virginia gentry's bound workforce. Slaves account for only 25 to 40 percent of the non-elites' workforce.

September 1696
- In "An act for punishment of ffornication and seaverall other sins and offences," the General Assembly addresses the perennial problems of swearing, drunkenness, and sex.

October 1705
- In "An act concerning Servants and Slaves," the General Assembly compiles and revises more than eighty years of law regarding indentured servants and enslaved Africans.

August 1755
- Twenty-one-year-old William Buckland, a carpenter and joiner from Oxford, England, signs a four-year indenture to work as a servant for George Mason. Buckland will oversee construction of Gunston Hall in Fairfax County.

Categories

References

Further Reading

Billings, Warren M. The Old Dominion in the Seventeenth
Century: A Documentary History of Virginia, 1606–1700. Revised Edition.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Billings, Warren M. "The Law of Servants and Slaves in Seventeenth-Century
Virginia." The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
99:1 (January 1991), 45–62.

Brown, Kathleen M. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious
Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Coombs, John C. "Beyond the 'Origins Debate': Rethinking the Rise of Virginia
Slavery," in Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old
Dominion. Douglas Bradburn and John C. Coombs, eds. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 2011.

Galenson, David W. "The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas:
An Economic Analysis." The Journal of Economic History 44:1
(March 1984), 1–26.

Kulikoff, Allan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of
Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake: 1680–1800. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1986.

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The
Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W. W. Norton and Company,
1975.